Michael Dulock to Open a Pizza Place in Malden

For three days a week, that is. Ahead, more about the project.

Michael Dulock, hard at work at his Somerville shop. Photo by Fawn Deviney.

For close to two years, local butcher extraordinaire Michael Dulock has been offering local, grass-fed beef—plus sausages, porchetta, and much more—to the Somerville area via his butcher shop, M.F. Dulock Pasture-Raised Meats. If you’ve been in there, you’ve no doubt noticed the shop’s size limitations. At 700 square feet, there’s hardly enough room for a refrigerator case, an aging chamber, and a few prep surfaces.

Which is why when Dulock decided to expand production on value-added products (a.k.a. pates, terrines, and other charcuterie crafted from animal parts) and prepared foods, he knew he needed to find more space. So, naturally, he bought himself a pizzeria in Malden. “I started looking at pizza shops, because a lot of them have full kitchens in them—everything that I would need to produce what I want,” Dulock says.

Once he found a spot on 97 Medford Street in Malden, he decided that he might actually want to use the existing pizza oven. “There’s some good pizza around, but there’s not a lot of great pizza around,” Dulock says. “I am a pizza purist. I don’t want pineapple on my pizza. I think you should slim it down and limit yourself. [I figured] I may as well start using the pizza oven.”

So what does a pizza purist serve? In Dulock’s words, “pizza party pizza.” “I don’t even know what the hell that is, or what that means, but [it’s] the pizza I had when I was growing up,” Dulock says. “I’m going to get some sort of amalgamation between a New York-style and a Neopolitan-style. Somewhere in that range.” Toppings will be streamlined and classic: pepperoni, mushrooms, garlic, onions, peppers. He has yet to start testing recipes, so he notes that this is all, of course, subject to change.

Since the space will mostly be devoted to making prepared foods for M.F. Dulock (which, Dulock says, will be expanding to new locations in the near future), the pizza will, most likely, only be served Thursday through Saturday and on occasional Sundays.

Dulock says that he’s looking to open by late summer or early fall. The reason we haven’t told you the name of the project? It doesn’t exist yet. But Dulock is all ears when it comes to suggestions, so if you have any ideas, let us know in the comments.

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MeowMix

Mike is the best. Good luck to him in all of these expansion ventures. Can’t wait!